POV

Saturday was a strange sort of a day. i was shooting from dawn, outdoors around Mumbai. By dusk, i was knackered. 15 years earlier, i would have gone to edit – but on Saturday, all i wanted was to get home. My mind had packed up.

SK called – Bharat, Madhavi, Chinmay, Raju, Story, Direction and Film – he rattled off……
I gaped like a gold fish – my mind recognizing the words, but not the meaning ….
SK said we were nominated in those categories.

I think that i am still grinning like an idiot – feels good.

Best Actor - Bharat Jadhav (male) Madhavi Juvekar (female) , Chinmay Kambli (child)

(Bharat Jadhav (Mouli) , Madhavi Juvekar (Manda) , Chinmay Kambli (Shyam) and Aarti More ( Dipti) in Jhing Chik Jhing)

Best Sound Raju Hegde

Best Story & Best Direction – Nitin Nandan

Best Film – Cogito Entertainment Pvt. Ltd. (that’s us

First Look Jhing Chik Jhing !

Jhing Chik Jhing – coming soon at a theatre near you !

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Anonymous

Jhing Chik Jhing – the Marathi film that my company Cogito Entertainment produced – is ready.

It was part of the panorama at the Pune International Film Festival (PIFF) on Wednesday – and ran houseful to an appreciative audience.

The last year has been a roller coaster. Producing a film, especially one that is made out of passion – is the best way to age rapidly I have come to a conclusion that Independent producers making movies is the modern equivalent of the quest for treasure – full of adrenaline and adventure !

This the poster for the film

Jhing Chik Jhing

Cast : Bharat Jadhav, Dilip Prabhavalkar, Madhavi Juvekar, Chinmay Kambli, Aarti More, Sanjay Mone, Uday Sabnis

Director : Nitin Nandan

Cinematographer : Amalendu Chaudhary

Producers : Cogito Entertainment Pvt. Ltd.

This from the official synopsis

Shyam is an everyday small boy, mischievous and very inquisitive. His world is made up of Mouli (father), Manda(mother), Dipti (sister) & Gautam (best friend).The family lives in a small house on their cotton farm, somewhere inCentral Maharashtra.

The family earns its meagre living by growing cotton, which is sold at the local Government Cotton Mill. But Shyam is least concerned with all this. Most of his time is spent in exploring,
discovering & playing with Gautam.

The major concerns in his life are the state of his school uniform (a hole in his pants) and whether his mother will make bhajjis (fritters) for dinner. Shyam’s idyllic life is thrown asunder when he realises that his family is reeling under debt and his father has all but given up hope of ever getting his farmlands out of mortgage. All dreams of a new school uniform &
bhajjis come crashing down.

After overcoming his initial dejection, Shyam takes it upon himself to save his
family. He is not so easily overcome by his parents’ sense of impending doom. The lessons he has learned at school give him reason to hope. One day in school, he hits upon a scheme that might just do the trick – a sack race that carries a winner’s prize of Rupees. 10,000/-.

With the help of Dipti and Gautam, he begins practicing with the sack for the big day. Mouli is at first perplexed by Shyam’s antics but later joins in enthusiastically. After all he wants to see his family happy in its last few days. Meanwhile our little hero is dead set in his practice (sack racing is tougher than it looks), with a single-minded aim of saving his family.

Come D-day, Shyam runs the race of his life – literally! But can he save his family?

And,

In addition to the traditioanl method of distributitng to theatres, we are taking the movie to 350 + villages across the length and breadth of Maharashtra to show it to farmers and farming communitites.

for more information drop in a line to me – at harini at cogitotv dot com….

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HyperActiveXAnonymous(3)

Once again my eye chances upon something that induces your my jaw to hit the floor and come back up in very, very slow motion. The world’s largest selling English language daily in association with the owner of an IPL team bring you this :

as my biz partner SR would point out “paidayashi aise the, ki halaat ne aapko aise banaya”.

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TarunAnonymous

From the ToI – sometime last year

When Sonia Gandhi hid her tears and despair behind those famous dark glasses and sat still like a nun at prayer,  the embalmed body of her husband Rajiv Gandhi on a hot May afternoon of 1991, few  would have imagined she would one day become one of the most powerful people on earth

am I mistaken or wasn’t Rajiv Gandhi blown to bits by a suicide bomber – and there was very little left to embalm

I wonder if a nice turn of phrase – which belongs more in a medieval romance than a national newspaper :

“hid her tears and despair behind those famous dark glasses and sat still like a nun at prayer”

justifies distorting reality !

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Anonymous(2)

One Line Review – The Day the Naxals won !

summary – on a planet far far away, computer generated ancient people – who live as one with nature – face off against wicked humans who want to mine a rare metal ! And, of course, with bows and arrows, other primitive weaponary, a wing and a prayer -  go up against automatic weapons and win – bad guys lose, good guys win. hero gets the girl – and its’ a houseful !

sometimes old stories work the best !

I enjoyed it !

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AnonymousSuren

November has been an eventful month in terms of remembrances. So much so that i have forgotten half the things that we are supposed to remember.  The most noise however, was for Nehru’s & then Indra Gandhi’s  birth anniversary, the Babri Masjid Demolition – thanks to the tabling of the Liberhan committee report and now 26/11.

Like practically everything else that we do — we have lost the essence and the learnings of these people and events — and have reduced all the incidents to rituals – flowers, words, tributes …. but, not much else .

The old afflictions remain :

• Our leadership is  still dis united on core issues- everything is a party political issue . Political Capital is to be gained on every little event. National interest be damned.

• Corruption is still rampant – and National Security will be damned unless that is checked.

• We Still want to wail from rooftops on being the victim – it is time that we stopped being victimised and started fighting back.

• Our Media is still sensational – polarising opinion deliberately for ratings. Divide & Rule still rules

• We still don’t care about people who are not like us. Which is why 26/11 is important and other dates when people died due to terror are not. Which is why the Taj and the Trident are important, but VT is not.

• Life is cheap. the poorer the life, the cheaper it is

• We don’t believe in responsibility and accountability. It is always someone else’s fault. Always.

• Rules are for others – not for us

• And finally, the most dangerous of them all – for us talk is action. We are so happy with bluster that we forget that action is needed so that what ever we say is taken seriously.

If we want to prevent other such 26/11’s – maybe we need to introspect . maybe we need to fix things within.  None of us can prevent a madman with a death wish from blowing himself up and us with him — what we can prevent is responses that make us like him.

Maybe the greatest tribute that we can give those who have died is to ensure that we don’t make cosmetic changes or have knee jerk responses — but ensure that in the long term we are a safe and secure country that doesn’t allow the murder of citizens to go unpunished

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SameerTarunAnonymous(2)

There is no better sign of a party losing all signs of perspective than to attack Sachin Tendulkar on the eve of his 20th anniversary. Which is essentially what Balasaheb Thackeray did.

Thackeray said his “friendly advice” to Tendulkar was that he should “concentrate on international pitch” and stay away from politics for his “own well-being”.

Sachin’s ‘mistake’ – to state

“Mumbai belongs to India. I am a Maharashtrian and proud to be a Maharashtrian, but I am also an Indian,”

The Shiv Sena which has been floundering like a beached goldfish for the last 5 years – has possibly decided to put itself out of its own misery make political capital by taking on India’s favorite son.

‘You are free to hit fours and sixers on the cricket field, but keep off the political pitch,’ …… when you speak politics like this you tear the hearts of Maharashtrians. ‘With that one statement, you became ‘run out’ in the pitch of Marathi minds,’ stay away from politics for ‘…….own well-being …Thackeray said,

This, predictably, has united the rest of India – except for the Thackeray family – in a manner in which that even 26/11 couldn’t. Imagine the Congress, BJP, Communists, SP, etal agreeing on anything ?  Well they all agree that the old man has lost it.

I am waiting for a whole bunch of Sachin bhakts to take to the street and burn Thackeray effigies (the whole disunited family, why discriminate?) for the insult to their God !

to get a jhalak of the sentiment – check out the churumuri poll on Thackeray v/s Tendulkar here.

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Anonymous(2)Tarun

1. Beat up women – prefrebly outside pubs or colleges. and claim that they are anti indian or anti hindu or anti muslim or whatever. Make sure that you call the neighbourhood shadiwala videographer - journalist so that you get oodles of publicity.
2. Break windows – prefebly outside a news channel. It can because you are bored – but don’t say that to them. Tell them that the billboard outside insults your ( regligious, linguistic, ethnic, caste, tribe…) sentiments
3. Burn a Theatere - Not one of those that run porn but a nice shiney multiplex that runs a sweet love story with a kissing scene. Forget kamasutra, khajuraho and the rest – kissing is against Indian culture. Burning theaters is not.
4. Terrorize ‘outsiders’/minorities - Given that we are a nation of minorities and outsiders – this should be fairly easy. The ‘outsiders’ could be anyone. If you are plannig to stand from Karnataka it could be Tamils, if you are planning to stand from Assam it could be Bengalis, if you are planning to stand from Maharashtra it can be anyone !
5. Dig up some Cricket Pitches – self explanatory. You don’t like a country. It could be any country. It is close to elections. They are playing us in India. You need publicity. What better way to get it than to issue threats against the cricket team and dig up the pitches ?
6. Burn Books - books are bound to be offensive to someone. conservative Christians, for example find Harry Potter offensive. So, find a book and burn it. prefrebly in front of cameras. If you want nationwide pubilcity – then burn an English book written by a Hindi author outside a news studio.
7. Defend a Holy Cow or a Holy God or a Holy Prophet – or all of them simultaneously. Obviously God almighty needs protection from anything that insults him or her. And most things that are done probably offend God(ess) – from spitting to caricaturing. Just find an issue and decide that it bothers God and go for it …..
8. Get Adopted – let’s face it political parties are products, and like all products they are marketed. Therefore you need a brand name and a brand push. if your name is shah or mehta ; verma or sharma ; calamur or patel — it’s not going to cut too much ice. You need names like Gandhi or Nehru or Thackery or Scindia. If you have a generic name like a Reddy or a Patil or a Chavan – then you need even more money to differentiate your brand from others called the same. so Adoption is the key - preferably by a rich successful political types. If you can’t get adopted, then you may consider changing your name by deed poll

If there are more, please add them

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Anonymous(7)

Sometimes, the mind is a dangerous place to get lost in.it is a place where time & space are elastic and past, present and future co-exist without any issue.And it is even more scary when that manifests itself as an almost lifelike, real event.

Amma had a nightmare a few days ago. She, appa and her kids (all 3 of us) are hauled up before a caste court, which wants to annul my parents marriage. Her father and brother (both are no more) are part of the nightmare – and speak for the caste panchayat against my parents and us. My parents and the 3 of us are in current avtaars – current age etal. My grandfather is from 30 years ago (when he died) and my uncle from a decade ago. The caste panchayat – in her nightmare – wants to try us as a family and pass judgement on our caste transgressions. My mother was shaking and visibly upset when she told us the nightmare.

When my parents got married – 1965 – they broke caste rules. They belonged to the same gotra - and they decided to get married. This according to caste rules is a strict no no. The mildest punishment was excommunication – essentially being made outcaste – and the most stringent punishment is death for the offending couple.

Thankfully, both my parents came from enlightened families. My maternal grandfather (my dada had passed away 3 years earlier), and my father’s elder brother – stood by the couple and ensured their marriage went off without a hitch. A large chunk of the family boycotted the wedding – because it wasn’t the kind of thing that was done. But, given the minor scandal that it caused – my folks got their marriage registered – because, technically – at least according to orthodoxy – the marriage was not valid !

44 years later, my mother wakes up to a nightmare that her family was going to be hurt because she broke caste rules.

Everytime there is a news report on couples getting burnt for breaking caste laws – my mother goes quiet. It never bothered her earlier – but then, she wasn’t an avid news viewer then. But for the last 5 years or so, she has been getting affected by this. One morning, about 5 years ago, i woke up and went to the kitchen to pour myself a cup of coffee – mom was talking to dad about a couple who got burnt alive in Haryana for getting married within the gotra - mom was telling dad ‘it could have been us’.

I wonder about caste at times. I wonder about its hold on people, despite its call to murder and burn alive people – because they broke some rules that lost relevance 3 millennia ago. I am curious about the kind of people who defend caste – saying it is part of our cultural heritage. I am fascinated by the power that caste bodies – panchayats – wield that gets a woman approaching 70, to have nightmares 44 years after she and the man of her choice broke the rules !

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TarunAnonymous(2)